Over 80 years tickling the ivories
SIERRA MADRE (Pasadena Star News), May 11, 2005:
Bob Mitchell got started as a musician in 1922 at the organ of The Church of the Ascension in Sierra Madre.
This weekend, at age 92, he'll be back in town to entertain again.
Mitchell will accompany a Sierra Madre Historical Preservation Society screening of "The Thief of Bagdad,' a silent Douglas Fairbanks film. The show is a benefit for a book on Sierra Madre history, of which Mitchell is a part.
"We moved to Sierra Madre (from Los Angeles) in 1916 because my father had tuberculosis,' Mitchell recalled from the bench of a Wurlitzer organ recently. "My father admired Theodore Roosevelt. He was supposed to be very sickly, but he went on anyway.'
While Mitchell's father recuperated, young Bob spent hours at the piano. His mother got him started on lessons at age 4, then moved him to the organ.
In 1924, Mitchell found his way to Pasadena's movie houses, where he played for silent films. As a teenager, he sat in for the regular organist at the Strand Theater five times a week, from 1924 to 1928.
Playing for a silent film, "You have to watch every minute, because when there's a subtle change you have to reflect that,' Mitchell said. "You make it up. It's never the same twice.'
After the talkies came in, Mitchell made a living as music director of a church in Montecito. In 1934, he spent a year studying at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. Then he moved to New York City, where he had his own show singing and playing on the radio.
After returning to Hollywood, where he still lives, Mitchell started a boys choir. The group performed on the radio and on the sound tracks of more than 100 movies. The Bob Mitchell Boys' Choir sang locally for 65 years.
As he recalls his exploits, Mitchell's eyes dance and his hands wave. His smile lines deepen. He puts on voices to imitate his snobbish mother or a pompous Episcopalian rector or his own impudent remarks. No weakness or comic foible goes unnoticed.
For a recent appointment to meet an organ repairman, Mitchell wore a suit jacket with a bright striped tie and a three- leaf clover on his lapel. After a photographer appeared, Mitchell wished he had removed his Coke-bottle lensed glasses from around his neck where they dangle on a string.
"Shoot only my good side,' he said. "Don't make me look too old.'
Mitchell never married.
"Gay as a garden party,' he said merrily when asked. "It doesn't matter now, with 'Will and Grace' and all that.'
Mitchell still performs on the pipe organ several times a week. Once every two weeks, he plays at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles' Fairfax District.
One recent gig was a private party at the theater for Johnny Depp and his date. The movie star placed five $100 bills in Mitchell's hand afterward as a tip, he said.
"I just love it,' Mitchell said of his on-again, off-again, back-on- again career playing for silent films. "When I haven't played for a movie before, it's pure enjoyment.'
By Sonya Geis, Staff Writer
sonya.geis@sgvn.com .
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